The WMO said on Monday that such early warnings were particularly needed in developing countries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Convening a special meeting in Geneva, the WMO said that in the past five decades, weather, water and climate-related hazards have killed more than 2 million people, with 90% of those deaths occurring in developing countries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo has made boosting early-warning systems a priority but still only 55% of countries have built up the surveillance capacity, data from the United Nations weather agency shows.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Many millions of people lack protection against dangerous weather which is inflicting an increasing toll on economic assets and vital infrastructure,” the WMO said in a statement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The number of countries using early-warning systems has doubled in three years to 119. But a WMO assessment of 62 countries showed half of them possess only basic capacity and 16% have less than basic capacity.<\/p>\n
However, the WMO is seeing progress in Africa, including Mozambique and Ethiopia, with more countries having functioning websites and issuing standardised alerts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13094,"template":"default||default","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-13093","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) urged action to close gaps in a global system of surveillance meant to protect people from extreme weather. ||The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) urged action to close gaps in a global system of surveillance meant to protect people from extreme weather. ","published_date":null,"news_description":"The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) urged action to close gaps in a global system of surveillance meant to protect people from extreme weather. ||The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) urged action to close gaps in a global system of surveillance meant to protect people from extreme weather. ","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18377,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13093\/revisions\/18377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=13093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}